Many Internet users participate in online communities. Online community members maintain profiles, in which they post information about themselves. Community members share information and interact with one another based on such profile information. For example, a user might add a new friend to his FaceBook community based on the fact that the friend's profile indicates that he went to the same high school. Another user might add a new contact to her LinkedIn community because of a profile indication that the two worked at the same company some years ago. However, the users adding members to their communities do not know that those parties actually went to the indicated high school or worked at the particular company; their profiles just claim that they did. Third-party community-based sites generally offer no validation of the profile data of their users. Even if they did, such validation would only be at an individual site level. In any case, a community web site is not a disinterested party, and like all self policing, validation of their own users would raise trust issues.
As time goes on, users are sharing more and more personal information via online communities. Profiles often include such personal data as identifying information that could be used for identity theft, pictures of children, thoughts and opinions, love interests, current activities, etc. As more information is distributed online, this information will become even more personal and private: current geographic location, financial data, medical history, etc. Heretofore, there has been no trustworthy mechanism to validate profile information across community sites. It would be desirable to address this shortcoming.